Source: United Nations (video statements)
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan called the three-year-old conflict there “an abandoned crisis,” warning that the scale of atrocities has yet to move the world to act.
Briefing reporters in New York, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan Denise Brown said the situation in the country has become a cycle of suffering with no end in sight.
“We really are on repeat in Sudan – repeats of sexual violence, repeated displacement, repeated deaths,” Brown said. “It feels like we’re stuck in this cycle, and everything is being repeated.”
Brown said the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR, had documented patterns of sexual violence, citing a recent MSF report for Darfur entitled “No Safe Space Left for Women and Girls in Darfur.” The organization has treated close to 2,500 survivors of sexual violence over the past year.
“What we also need to be addressing here is the impregnation of these women and girls, and the consequences for them, for the families, for the communities, and of course most particularly for these children,” she said.
Brown said OHCHR had also documented mass atrocities around El-Fasher, where 6,000 people were killed in three days – a figure she said was likely an undercount. She noted that the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan now refers to the hallmarks of genocide.
“Why isn’t the world outraged enough to do something about it? What has to happen more? What more has to happen for everyone to sit up and pay attention, to find a solution,” she said.
Brown, speaking from Khartoum, said the humanitarian community was present across the country but was not the solution. “We are here picking up the pieces,” she said, calling on member states to examine the war economy and the flow of weapons into the country.
She flagged Dilling as an active area of concern, saying the town has been under daily attacks since she visited in March, with convoys unable to get in and residents trying to flee again. She said she was also heading to the Blue Nile, where close to 30,000 people had been displaced.
On funding, Brown said the humanitarian response plan was only 16 percent funded against a 2.9 billion dollars ask for 2026, after closing 2025 at 35 percent. “When we get a tent, that tent, … doesn’t become six tents. That tent is one tent,” she said.
“Please don’t call this the forgotten crisis,” Brown also stated her personal plea. “I’m referring to this as an abandoned crisis.”